18. The War between Light and Darkness

A relentless war rages in the heavenly realms. It is between the Light and Life that God’s living Word is and that He, by His Perfect nature, gives forth to His Creation…and He is invading the realms of the Serpent…the realm of Death and Darkness. That is the realm of Sin…the state of being severed or ‘decapitated’ from God’s living Word, who is our true Source or ‘Head.’ Even people that are expert students of the written Word can be decapitated from the living Word that the written Word reveals. It is the living Word…the one that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob knew…who contains, reveals and imparts the Life and Light of God. That’s why it is so important that we receive and embrace Him just exactly as His Father reveals or speaks Him to us! We dare not presume to ‘edit’ or second guess Almighty God. No creature has the authority or capacity to assume authority to change or ‘morph’ God’s living and written Word into alien configurations. To do that is to endorse and duplicate the Serpent’s tactic and come under his domination. In that case, he drags you into his Death and Darkness.

We learned in Genesis that the Serpent lured Eve and Adam to decapitate themselves by rejecting and disobeying the revelation God’s living Word had given to them. The revelation they rejected is the very revelation Moses gave to the world about Adam and Eve and what happened to them…in the Torah. The Serpent lured them into that ‘editing mode’ that questions, argues and contradicts what Almighty God says through the living Word. They rejected the Word as He had been given to them and embraced the Serpent’s word instead. Thus instead of being ‘disciples’ of God’s living Word, they (and the entire human race that comes from them) became ‘living dead’ slaves to the most hate-filled, destructive being in all of God’s Creation. And if God hadn’t sent His living Word after them, to reconcile and cover their nakedness and re-connect them, and all their children, to Himself…none of us would have any hope of Reconciliation with God or the Redemption, Regeneration, Resurrection and Restoration of which we are so desperately in need!

This helps us understand some of the depths of the malice and perpetual hatred the Serpent harbors against God’s Word and His Creation. He has done enormous, lethal damage to mankind and the world in which we live. So the mission God gave to His living Word is: “Go after them…reconcile them to Me…cover their Sin nakedness…cleanse them and bring them out of Death and Darkness…and restore them fully to My Eternal Life and Kingdom of Light!”

So God’s living Word obeys…He comes after each succeeding generation of humans to reveal Himself…and proclaim His Gospel of Salvation…and do whatever it takes to impart His eternal Life into living dead humans…that they may share in His Life and live as His image and likeness in fellowship with God, as His regenerated ‘sons’ and eternal heirs. The Torah reveals this issue. And this is what Yeshua was referring to when He said this to some of His contemporary first century fellow Israelites:

“…‘I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst. But I said to you that you (Israelites) have seen Me, and yet do not believe. All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. This is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all that He has given Me I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son (God’s living, creative Word) and believes in Him (enough to do what He says) will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the Last Day.’

“Therefore the Jews were grumbling about Him, because He said, ‘I am the Bread that came down out of Heaven.’ They were saying, ‘Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does He now say, ‘I have come down out of Heaven’?’ Jesus answered and said to them, ‘Do not grumble among yourselves. No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day. It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught of God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father, comes to Me. Not that anyone has seen the Father, except the One who is from God; He has seen the Father. Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life. I am the Bread of Life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the Bread which comes down out of Heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living Bread that came down out of Heaven; if anyone eats of this Bread, he will live forever; and the Bread also which I will give for the life of the world is My flesh (My human Covenantal Representation of all of Adam’s children and what My Father sent Me to be and do in their name.)” (John 6:35-51 Amplification and emphasis added.)

Long before His incarnation and appearance as Messiah Yeshua, the living Word had previously appeared to the pharaoh of Egypt in and through Moses and Aaron. He came to take what was His – the family of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – out of slavery to the Serpent-dominated pharaoh…and back into His own world-redeeming service:

“…Moses and Aaron came and (God’s living Word speaking through them) said to Pharaoh, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Let My people go that they may celebrate a feast (of Life, Light and Freedom) to Me in the wilderness.’” But (the Serpent, speaking through his deluded slave, the) Pharaoh said, ‘Who is the Lord that I should obey His voice to let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, and besides, I will not let Israel go.’” (Exodus 5:1-2 Amplification and emphasis added.)

The War in the Heavenlies

And so now, the war between Life and Light vs. Death and Darkness and Righteousness vs. Sin that Genesis reveals to us, continues to rage in the Exodus. Now we will see the supernatural, miraculous elements of ‘the war in the heavenlies’, become more prominent. Throughout history, the beleaguered, living dead human race has had a fascination with the supernatural. They agonize as the powers of Darkness afflict them and struggle to gain ‘an edge’, to achieve an advantageous foothold in the ‘rat race’ of daily life. So to deepen their delusions, the Serpent accommodates them. He eases the death grip he maintains on them and lightens the loads with which he himself burdens them. That manipulates their created circumstances and Sin-inflicted conditions in ways that make it appear as if they have supernatural power and that it is some false god of theirs that is bestowing blessings upon them. He suspends what his fellow unclean spirits do to harass and oppress and that gives people a false sense of ‘control’. We call such things ‘magic,’ or ‘sorcery, or ‘witchcraft’. And they take the form of religious ritualistic formulas, incantations and ‘spells’. The effect is that the humans are lured further and further away from the living Word of God and His true Life and Light.

This is how the Serpent tried to counter the God-anointed signs Moses and Aaron gave to the pharaoh as proof that they were appearing before him in the Name of the living God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob:

“Now the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, ‘When Pharaoh speaks to you, saying, ‘Work a miracle,’ then you shall say to Aaron, ‘Take your staff and throw it down before Pharaoh that it may become a serpent.’ So Moses and Aaron came to Pharaoh, and thus they did just as the Lord had commanded; and Aaron threw his staff down before Pharaoh and his servants, and it became a serpent. Then Pharaoh also called for the wise men and the sorcerers, and they also, the magicians of Egypt, did the same with their secret arts. For each one threw down his staff and they turned into serpents. But Aaron’s staff swallowed up their staffs. Yet Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, and he did not listen to them, as the Lord had said.” (Exodus 7:8-13 NASB. Emphasis added.)

Both Aaron and the sorcerers gave supernatural signs. But Scripture is showing us that they came from two diametrically opposed sources. One came from the Life and Light that God’s living Word imparts; the other from the Death and Darkness of the Serpent’s rebellion that separates us from our Creator, God’s living Word. Because a result is supernatural does not prove that it comes from God and is backed by His authentic Validation. The supernatural is not in itself authentic Divine validation of claims that are presented for human consideration. We must probe and investigate at deeper levels and trace what is happening all the way to its true, ultimate source. For disciples, it must come from God’s living and written Word!

We said earlier that the Serpent manipulates and exploits worldly, idolatrous people like the pharaoh. He entrances them and then speaks and acts through their unwitting flesh. The Serpent is only a creature of God, like us. He was created to be an awesome angelic being in God’s service. So even after he and the other angels rebelled and fell into Sin, the powers and abilities of mind and will they possess far exceed the powers and abilities of poor fallen humans. So it’s easy for them to deceive and manipulate and exploit humans. And so they dominate and exploit them for their own malevolent purposes.

This is why God warned His chosen people, his ‘disciple nation’ through the Torah about this ever-present danger. He gave a ‘rule of thumb,’ a ‘magnetic north’ by which we could navigate through life and be able to discern what is true and God-given and what is not. This is what He told His people through Moses:

“If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder comes true, concerning which he spoke to you, saying, ‘Let us go after other gods (whom you have not known) and let us serve them,’ you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams; for the Lord your God is testing you to find out if you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. You shall follow the Lord your God and fear Him; and you shall keep His commandments, listen to His voice, serve Him, and cling to Him.

“But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has counseled rebellion against the Lord your God who brought you from the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery, to seduce you from the way in which the Lord your God commanded you to walk. So you shall purge the evil from among you.” (Deuteronomy 13:1-5 Emphasis added.)

Read the whole chapter and see the stringent warnings God gives. In His sight, the stakes and their importance are obviously enormous. He says that even if supernatural things are done to support some teaching, movement, god or self-proclaimed messiah or spiritual leader, Israel will be able to tell if they are from the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob or not, by whether or not they contradict, deny, reject or try to change what Moses revealed about Him in the Torah. If they deviate, then even if they perform miraculous supernatural signs…God’s people can know that what is being promoted is a ploy of the ‘Father of Lies!’

Foundational Revelation of the Torah

Every major point upon which our Faith is based comes out of the Torah written by Moses! What we know about God and His Perfection and holy Nature and His living Word and about mankind and Sin and its fatal results…we know only because the Torah reveals it. So the unbelieving, Serpent-dominated decapitated world that rejects or ignores the Torah…must somehow try to fill the huge vacuum left by the Torah’s absence. Thus it invents an endless array of substitute, false gods and humanistic philosophies that give alternate ‘answers’ to the enormous questions about life in this world and where it came from and about the purpose for Mankind’s existence.

So is it any surprise that our Master, the living Word of God Himself, would give full endorsement to what is contained in the written Word of God? The written Word reveals Him! And He was sent to uphold, properly interpret, protect and teach what is written and promised about Him! It is no wonder that Yeshua thus remained ever-faithful to the Torah and that He demonstrated and taught the ways of His Heavenly Father and His Kingdom as revealed in the Torah all of His life on Earth. He demonstrated the ways of His Father to the disciples and cautioned them to remain grounded upon this unchangeable source, this ‘Rock’. They watched Him submit to obey, protect and fulfill the revelations and commandment guidelines Father told Israel to teach to the rest of the world. He showed His disciples that it’s not enough for a thing to be merely ‘supernatural. It must also be ‘spiritual’ in order to truly be from Almighty God. He proved whether or not things were spiritual by following the guidelines provided by the Torah. Torah separates what only seems to come from God, from the true Word of the one and only Living God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob:

“Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after He had fasted forty days and forty nights, He then became hungry. And the tempter came and said to Him, ‘If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.’ But He answered and said, ‘IT IS WRITTEN, (in Deuteronomy 8:3) ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.’

“Then the devil took Him into the holy city and had Him stand on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to Him, ‘If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down; for it is written (in Psalm 91), ‘He will command His angels concerning You’;and ‘On their hands they will bear You up, So that You will not strike Your foot against a stone.’”

“Jesus said to him, “On the other hand, IT IS WRITTEN (in Deuteronomy 6:16), ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

“Again, the devil took Him to a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory; and he said to Him, ‘All these things I will give You, if You fall down and worship me.’ Then Jesus said to him, “Go, Satan! FOR IT IS WRITTEN: ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and serve Him only.’” (See Deuteronomy 6:13) Then the devil left Him; and behold, angels came and began to minister to Him.” (Matthew 4:1-11 Amplification and emphasis added.)

God warned Israel about the dangers of demonic deception and commanded His people to use the Torah He gave them through Moses. It was to be their irreplaceable Foundation and template…the ‘benchmark’ or ‘plumb line’ for gauging, measuring and assessing whatever would come at them in the future. Notice that the Serpent knew the Scriptures and tried to use one of the psalms for his own deceptive ends. But his use of Psalm 91 did not line up with what Moses revealed in the Torah. And that is how Yeshua exposed, discredited and confounded his demonic tactic. The Torah revelation was the ‘plumb line’ by which Yeshua assessed and measured and properly interpreted the rest of the Biblical revelation God had given to Israel, through the prophets and wisdom writers and apostles that came after Moses.

This is extremely important for disciples of the Word of God to know and take to heart. Our Master commanded us to cling to the same living God that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob knew…as He revealed Himself, through His living Word, in the Torah. We are to listen only to God’s living Word, as He is revealed by Moses. Everything that comes afterward must match and line up properly with that foundation. Subsequent things must be like stories of a skyscraper that are added one atop another. Everything above must align perfectly and coincide and synchronize and be in perfect ‘plumb’ with the granite-solid Torah foundation at its base. So for us disciples of God’s living Torah, the written Torah is to serve as our unshakable ‘Rock’ foundation and set of ‘footings’.

Today, we know that it is Yeshua the Messiah who was and is the living Word or living Torah revealed through what Moses wrote in his written Word or Torah. So, given this understanding, we can see why Yeshua, centuries later, said to His disciples:

“Do not think that I came to abolish the Law (Torah) or the Prophets (the Tanach); I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:17-20 Amplification and emphasis added.)

Had Yeshua deviated from God’s Word as revealed through Moses, even in the least, according to the Torah itself, He would have proven to be a false Messiah. Any deviation would have exposed Him as a fraud – despite his many miracles! So the fact that the pharaoh’s sorcerers duplicated what God anointed Aaron to do with his staff proved nothing. The proof came when the sorcerers were unable to go all the way. They were exposed and discredited and proven to be acting independently of God’s living Word. They were trying to deny and contradict God’s Word as they served and represented the false gods enshrined in Egypt’s pantheon of idolatry. So the outcome of the issue was still pending. Ultimate proof of authenticity and validation was needed. And God gave it:

“But Aaron’s staff swallowed up their staffs!” (Exodus 7:12)

The Egyptians were contradicting God’s revelation of His living Word through Moses… the very same revelation Moses recorded in his Torah. Miraculous signs accompanied God’s Word as He was revealing Himself through Moses. Then the Serpent did his utmost to deny and cancel out what God’s Word was saying. Further proof was needed. So God’s Holy Spirit gave the ultimate proof. Aaron’s Covenant Staff…overwhelmed and swallowed up the demonic lies represented by the staffs of the sorcerers. Thus God showed once more that He will always have the last word, the true, living Word of the true living God.

We disciples know that our Master Yeshua is the living Word of God that Moses was revealing in the Torah. We know it was Yeshua, before He was revealed to us as Yeshua. He is the one through whom God was doing and saying everything in Genesis. He was the Word through whom God created, sustained, protected, delivered, blessed and revealed everything that Moses wrote down. He was the Word through which God gave His All-Encompassing, All-Sufficient Perfect Original Blessing to Adam and Eve. He was the Word that came after naked Adam and Eve after they sinned…in order to cover them and begin the process of humanity’s full reconciliation and restoration to its original God-given ‘image and likeness’ identity, purpose and destiny. He was the Word sent to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph in Genesis. He was the Word that included those fathers of the Faith into His Father’s Eternal Blood Covenant! Yes, now we know that our Master Yeshua is the living Torah…sent by God…to fulfill to perfection, everything said about Him and promised through Him, in the written Torah.

So it is obvious that if Yeshua had put the Torah aside, or abolished it, or deviated from it in any way in what He did or taught or commanded His disciples to do…the Word of God would have been committing suicide! The living Word would have denied and contradicted Himself! So the above text from Matthew shows God’s living Word making sure that His disciples never misunderstand or distort God’s intentions. He tells them point blank that they must always remain faithful and obedient to what God revealed about Him and commanded through Him in the Torah. And they must be more faithful to do this than even the very religious scribes and Pharisees of Israel that went through the motions of observing the written Torah, but whose hearts were far from God’s living Torah, Yeshua. When that happens, people have slipped off the ‘Narrow Path’ of the Torah, and are trying to ‘straddle’ two different paths…the Path of God…and the path of Serpent-promoted, man-made, alternate religious traditions and omissions and additions that veer away from what God had given to the world originally.

So on the day that Moses and Aaron faced off with the pharaoh and his sorcerers, Yeshua, God’s living Word who is the Creator and Sustainer and Protector of Israel, was being revealed through the supernatural sign performed by Aaron with his staff. But the Serpent was able to counter that by duplicating the feat through the pharaoh’s sorcerers:

“Then Pharaoh also called for the wise men and the sorcerers, and they also, the magicians of Egypt, did the same with their secret arts. For each one threw down his staff and they turned into serpents.” (Exodus 7:10-11)

Further proof was needed. The ultimate source of these two supernatural manifestations had to be uncovered in order to know which one was truly supernatural and spiritual, and which one was merely supernatural and therefore, demonic. So God testified to the true revelation of His Word by backing and endorsing the testimony of Aaron and seeing to it that what Moses and Aaron were saying, in other words, the living Word of God, swallowed up and overwhelmed completely, the words of the Serpent that the pharaoh and his sorcerers were mouthing. Ultimately, as is always the case, what God promised and threatened through Moses…overwhelmed and discredited every denial and rebellious word and decision of the pharaoh who was representing the false gods of Egypt…and ultimately, the Serpent.

God only testifies to and validates His own living Word, His beloved Son. It is only in Him that the Father is well pleased. So to show whether or not someone’s claim to speak for and represent God’s Word is telling the truth or not, He gives His stamp of authenticity and validation to it, just as He validated the testimony of Moses and Aaron. God truly chose to reveal His living Word…through Moses and Aaron. And that is what the Serpent is forever trying to deny, blot out and twist beyond recognition. He does it to deceive and confuse human beings so that he can pull them off of God’s Foundational Base and maintain his ‘death grip’ around their spirits, souls and bodies.

“While he (Peter) was still speaking, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and behold, a voice out of the cloud said, ‘This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased; listen to Him!’ When the disciples heard this, they fell face down to the ground and were terrified. And Jesus came to them and touched them and said, ‘Get up, and do not be afraid.’ And lifting up their eyes, they saw no one except Jesus Himself alone.” (Matthew 17:5-8) Amplification and emphasis added.)

Those who stand on the Rock of the Torah and base everything they are and claim and do on that changeless God-given Foundation, are set free from the lies and deceptions of the Serpent…and from his realm of Death and Darkness. They are covered and protected and delivered by Life and Light Himself, the invincible, eternal, Perfect living Word of God. God always protects, endorses, validates and testifies to the Authority of His Word, His living image and likeness – with awesome supernatural AND SPIRITUAL Holy Spirit Power. True disciples of God’s Word who faithfully and obediently live, speak and do everything while remaining rooted in ‘The Rock’ will also be backed by God’s Holy Spirit Validation, supernaturally and SPIRITUALLY!

“Then Jesus said to him, “Go, Satan! For it is written (in Deuteronomy 6:13), ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and serve Him only.’” Then the devil left Him; and behold, angels came and began to minister to Him.” (Matthew 4:10-11 Amplification and emphasis added.)

Remember what the stakes are behind everything Scripture tells us concerning this war between Light and Darkness. The eternal Salvation of the human race depends on how each man and woman reacts and responds to the living Word of the one true God. The Serpent is intent on erasing or distorting and destroying our ability to know and embrace God’s living Word so that he can sever us from the Life and Light that only He can give. God’s Word has been sent to reach out to us and reconnect with us so that He can cover and redeem and cleanse us…to full restoration. And He is the one revealed in the Torah.

So…will we receive and embrace Him as He is really revealed, or will we choose to ‘edit’ Him and change God’s revelation of His Word to suit our own tastes and pick and choose which of His commandments we will obey and from which ones we will decide to declare ourselves to be exempt? The answer will depend on whether we receive and embrace God’s living Word as He was revealed in the first five books of the Bible. It will also determine whether or not we are true disciples, transforming, according to that God-given guideline and set of ‘headings’, into Yeshua’s image and likeness, or not. If the Serpent succeeds in destroying us, it will be because he managed to drag us off of our God-given, solid Rock Foundation…the living and written Torah, and got us to swallow the cheap counterfeit substitute ‘fish hooks’ that he puts in its place.

“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.’ (Torah-lessness)

“Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them may be compared to a wise man who built his house on The Rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on The Rock. Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and it fell—and great was its fall.

“When Jesus had finished these words, the crowds were amazed at His teaching; for He was teaching them as one having authority, and not as their scribes.” (Matthew 7:21-29 Amplification and emphasis added.)

The Ultimate Deception

Will the Serpent succeed in robbing us of our true purpose as God’s image and likeness? Will he succeed in separating us from our God-given Torah Foundation? If he gets people off that foundation he can even convince people that he doesn’t even exist! In that case, they will assume that Satan or ‘the devil’ is nothing but myth and presents no danger to us. Thus he is able to lead his deceived victims into believing that the notion of ‘Sin’ is also nothing but an ‘old wives’ tale’ and that they are already essentially ‘good people’ and ‘nice loving persons’ that have no need of forgiveness, redemption and Blood Atonement cleansing. The authentic revelation concerning Sin and Death and Darkness and the absolute need for the adequate Blood Atonement that God requires comes to us only from the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob who revealed Himself in the Torah! So if the Serpent drags us off of the Rock of that revelation, he destroys our true God-given identity, purpose and destiny. He decapitates us and separates us from our True Head and Source of Life, God’s living and written Word.

In the text from Matthew 7, quoted above, the original Greek word that is translated as ‘Lawlessness’ is ‘anomia.’ ‘Nomos’ is a Greek word for ‘Law.’ ‘Anomia’ means ‘without the Law’ or – ‘Lawless.’ ‘Nomos’ was the Greek word that was used in the Septuagint to translate the Hebrew word ‘Torah.’ So what the word ‘Lawlessness’ describes, is people that worship and serve gods that did not come from, and do not match the revelation and commandments God entrusted to Moses and to Israel in the Torah. The Torah is the source from which we learn about the true God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Torah reveals and exposes the false gods that the Serpent and his rebellion and the Sin and Death inflict on the human race to deceive and destroy it. Torah calls us out of that ‘Egypt’, the demonic ground of this fallen world’s system and its idolatry.

So if the Serpent erases the Torah revelation from our minds, we lose our understanding of the real God and our awareness of Sin and what it has done to us. The result leaves us with no real, authentic, God-given spiritual footings. But those footings are essential; without them we cannot develop that vitally important realization of our desperate need to repent of our state of Sin so that we can receive and embrace God’s living Word who is revealed in the Torah as ‘The Tree of Life.’

If the Serpent separates us from God’s living Word, the Word can’t be the Redeemer and Restorer we must have to be set free from the Serpent’s fatal clutches. The true Word of God is not going to ‘come into my Egyptian life’ and help me to live it better. He won’t have anything to do with Egypt or with those that insist on remaining part of it. Egypt is the mortuary that houses the living dead slaves of the Serpent! So the true Word of the True God summons everyone, Jew and Gentile alike, out of Egypt…as quickly and completely as possible! We must come into His Life…Real Life…the Life of God’s living Word, Yeshua the Messiah.

This is why the Serpent specializes in twisting, warping and changing this vital revelation that God gave to us for our Salvation. He is obsessed with his rebellion against God and is intent on taking over the Authority and Position of God’s living Word! But everything he says and does is based on lies. Satan is only a rebellious, fallen, created angel. He is not a true creator. It is not in him to create a true, alternate reality in opposition to God’s created Truth and Reality. He is only a clever liar and deceiver with no real authority. He can only spin deceptive, lie-based virtual reality webs in which he entangles and entraps the minds and wills of foolish humans who forsake God’s Word and swallow the sharp, deadly barbs that lie hidden within his very convincing Word-replacing ‘lures.’ In the words of Scripture, the Serpent is ‘The Father of Lies.’ That is what Yeshua, God’s living Word made flesh, called him as He spoke to some of His deceived fellow Israelites:

“Why do you not understand what I am saying? It is because you cannot hear My word. You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the Truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I (God’s living Word made flesh) speak the Truth, you do not believe Me.” (John 8:43-45 Amplification and emphasis added.)

God’s Living Word Revealed Through Moses

The Israelites Yeshua was speaking to in John’s Gospel were resisting, rejecting and violating God’s Word who had been revealed previously to them through Moses in Genesis and Exodus. Yeshua was God’s living Word in both cases. But the revelation of God’s Word through Moses had not penetrated them enough to predispose those Israelites to recognize and embrace the revelation of God’s living Word when He appeared to them in the person of Yeshua. So they continued to reject God’s living Word, failing to heed the warning Moses had given to them centuries before, and thus they failed to recognize their Messiah:

“The Lord your God will raise up for you a Prophet like me from among you, from your countrymen, you shall listen to Him! This is according to all that you asked of the Lord your God in Horeb on the day of the assembly, saying, ‘Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God, let me not see this great fire anymore, or I will die.’ The Lord said to me, ‘They have spoken well. I will raise up a Prophet from among their countrymen like you, and I will put My words in His mouth, and He shall speak to them all that I command Him. It shall come about that whoever will not listen to My words which He shall speak in My Name, I Myself will require it of him. But the prophet who speaks a word presumptuously in My name which I have not commanded him to speak, or which he speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.’” (Deuteronomy 18:15-20)

The same living Word of God that we know today as Yeshua was the one dealing with the pharaoh through Moses and Aaron. And the Serpent tried to get Moses and Aaron off track and discredit the Word of God they’d been commissioned to reveal to the pharaoh. He tried to counter Aaron’s supernatural sign by manipulating the deceived flesh of the sorcerers. God’s Word produced supernatural results; but so do the Serpent and his angelic powers of Darkness. That’s why God cautions us to probe and investigate such things…and trace them all the way to their true source.

The proof of Divine Authenticity and Truth is not determined by what is merely supernatural. It must also be ‘spiritual’. It must originate in God…through His living Word. It must be transmitted to us by the Power of God’s Holy Spirit! This is the authentic, God-given Revelation and Direction that Moses and the other prophets and apostles of Israel were commissioned to reveal and emphasize not only to their fellow Israelites, but to the entire world! And they must confront anyone, especially the very religious decapitated people whose hearts are always closed and opposed to the Authority of God’s living Word:

“You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Therefore bear fruit in keeping with repentance; and do not suppose that you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham for our father; for I say to you that from these stones God is able to raise up children to Abraham.  The axe is already laid at the root of the trees; therefore every tree that does not bear good (spiritual) fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” (Matthew 3:7-10 Amplification added.)

“…be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand firm therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; in addition to all, taking up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God…” (Ephesians 6:10-17 Emphasis added.)

At the time the apostles were writing, their texts were not yet a part of the Canon of Scripture. Christians accept them as such now, but in the days of Yeshua and his original Jewish New Covenant apostles and disciples, the only Scriptures in existence were the Hebrew Scriptures, the Tanach…or, as many say today, ‘The Old Testament.’ This was the case when Paul wrote the following text to his spiritual son Timothy. At that time, there was no ‘New Testament.’ Paul was simply writing a letter to his spiritual son. So when he referred to ‘sacred writings’ and ‘Scripture,’ he meant the Tanach which was completely based upon the Torah and served to amplify and explain it!

“Indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. But evil men and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings (of the Tanach) which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture (only the Tanach existed at that time) is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:12-17 Amplification and emphasis added.)

A few years ago, I was pained to hear an associate pastor of a Christian mega-church in a large metropolitan area tell me in a casual, matter of fact tone:

“In our church we hardly ever preach or teach from the Old Testament.”

My spirit is grieved as I remember that. What are the ramifications embedded within such a statement? When I think of it I feel compelled to intercede before God on behalf of all the people that receive a steady diet of such emasculated teaching. They are being deprived of the taproot of the Faith and remain naively unaware of the enormous depths of revelation of which they are being robbed! Because most modern people are so used to remaining spiritually passive and immature, they do not exercise their God-given responsibility to dig into the Scriptures and read and think for themselves! They think and act like helpless children, forever dependent on others to spoon feed them, spiritually speaking. Because they remain so dependent on their professional religious go-betweens, and look to them to do all the thinking and deciding, they never learn enough to be able to question and challenge the ‘starvation diet’ so many habitually receive. If the understanding of ‘God’ and of ‘Jesus’ that they have is not based upon ‘The Rock’ that Yeshua spoke about to His Israelite disciples, The Torah Foundation, then isn’t the source from which they are drawing their understanding…Lawless? And if it’s Lawless, then from what source does it really come?

Why do so many religious leaders and teachers embrace and duplicate the pharaoh’s negative attitude and relay his antagonism toward Moses and what God was revealing about Himself through the revelation He gave of Himself in his Torah? Why do they side with the pharaoh and perpetuate his antagonism and disobedience to the Word of the Lord that they are claiming to worship? Did Yeshua not, in the above-quoted text from Matthew 5, command His disciples to respond to Moses and the revelation God gave through him with the utmost respect and fidelity? Was not the lifestyle of our Master that we disciples are called to follow, based firmly upon that God-given Rock?

Are We on Shifting Sand… or Are We Grounded on Solid Rock?

Torah-rejecting teachings are built on shifting sand. So how can God back and endorse them and release His Spirit-transmitted validation? Will what is built on sand sustain us and ensure our perseverance and eventual triumph over the powers of Darkness when the excruciating Last Days testing promised by the book of Revelation has actually come upon us? What will Yeshua say to such people if they continue to follow the pharaoh’s attitudes, opinions and practices? Will they not be the ‘Lawless’ people He spoke of…the people that the Serpent dragged away from our Master’s Narrow Path?

And here’s another ramification that comes from our consideration of the ‘supernatural’ as opposed to the ‘spiritual:’ Have you noticed that whatever God requires of fallen human flesh in His written Word is utterly impossible for fallen decapitated flesh to do? God’s standards go directly contrary to our fallen, living death human nature and its natural Sin-loving tendencies, appetites, desires and urges. God’s Word grates against and directly opposes what the fallen world system considers ‘normal’ and ‘human’ and claims as its ‘innate rights.’ The people of the world insist that no one has the authority or the right to judge them or forbid them from pursuing their own natural drives, passions and personal urges and desires. But according to the revelation God gives in His Torah, there’s something very wrong with what is natural and normal to fallen flesh. It is Sin-corrupted! It is symptomatic of spiritual living death! We are not to assert, flaunt and strive to satisfy and fulfill it. We are commanded to deny and crucify it and be free of it! Torah teaches this in many ways, contradicting and condemning worldly attitudes and any defiant Word-ignoring stance. The Word of God says that He created us to be His image and likeness! But fallen men declare that we have an innate (and some even claim that it is a ‘god-given’) ‘right’ to determine and direct our own lives as we please and to pursue our ‘life, liberty and happiness’ as we see fit…without any outside interference!

So there’s a huge chasm separating those two viewpoints. God’s side warns about Sin and its wages of Death and our need to repent of it. But the other side rejects all of that and claims to be perfectly okay, just the way it is. So this is why God’s holy, righteous requirements, standards and commandments are supernatural and spiritual. Apart from our true Head, whose Eternal Life must be transmitted into us by the Holy Spirit, it is utterly impossible for decapitated, living dead people to recognize or be aware of, much less live up to and fulfill God’s Perfect Standards of Righteousness. Without the proper Head on our spiritual shoulders, we’re decapitated and separated from our Life Source, the living Word of God and His awesome holiness, righteousness and perfection. What He is and does cannot flow into us and operate through us when we’re decapitated because what God gives us through His Word…is Spiritual…transmitted into us by the Holy Spirit. And the Spirit is not given to anything that is ‘Head-less’ and ‘Law-less’.

But when we’re one with God’s living Word, as required by the written Word, we can be Yeshua’s image and likeness! Because His holiness and righteousness, nature, character and disposition are not in those who rebel against Him…it is impossible for them to meet the standards of the living God. So God’s ‘Staff’ swallows up those of the demonic sorcerers.

God spoke forth His Word. He is able to live and share His perfection and eternal Life with us…from within…by the Holy Spirit! Only He fulfills God’s perfect standards! And when He is our Head, He lives and acts and meets God’s standards in our name! Only the Word of God can meets God’s perfect standards perfectly. And for His true disciples, He does that…while we learn to rest in Him and to draw continually from the perfection of His finished work and indwelling Presence.

“So there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For the one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His. Therefore let us be diligent to enter that rest, so that no one will fall, through following the same example of disobedience.” (Hebrews 4:9-11)

This leads us to an even deeper level of revelation concerning the adequacy and valid legitimacy of things that are ‘supernatural.’ We’ve already seen that it’s not enough for something to be supernatural. It must also be something that originates in God…and is mandated in and through His Word…and is effectively executed and made to be active and alive within our flesh by the Power of the Holy Spirit. In that sense, the supernatural thing is also ‘spiritual’…and therefore, it is proven to be a righteous reality that is worked into us by Almighty God:

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes in Him (obeys Him like Moses did) is not judged; he who does not believe (like the pharaoh who rejected the Word as Moses revealed Him) has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. This is the judgment, that the Light (the revelation of God’s living and written Word) has come into the world, and men loved the Darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil (decapitated). For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But he who practices the truth (of being the image and likeness of the indwelling Word) comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God!” (John 3:16-21 Amplification and emphasis added.)

“…work out (manifest the truth of ) your salvation (that God is working into you) with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.” (Philippians 2:12a-13 Amplification and emphasis added.)

Can you see how all the people mentioned in the Bible, especially the children of Israel, serve as a revelation of God and His ways, in either positive or negative ways? And can you see that the two groups are divided according to their attitude toward and response to the Authority of God’s living and written Word? So for disciples who have been called to follow God’s living Word, it’s a gross contradiction when they claim to be His disciples …as He is revealed in the written Word…while blithely daring to ‘edit’ God’s written Word, picking and choosing which parts they want to emphasize…and ignore and disobey the parts they judge to be not good enough or at least, ‘not intended for us.’

“The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good; and the evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil; for his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart. Why do you call Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say? Everyone who comes to Me and hears My words and acts on them, I will show you whom he is like: he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid a foundation on The Rock; and when a flood occurred, the torrent burst against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built. But the one, who has heard and has not acted accordingly, is like a man who built a house on the ground without any foundation; and the torrent burst against it and immediately it collapsed, and the ruin of that house was great.” (Luke 6:45-49 Emphasis added.)

So revelation of what is ‘spiritual’ as opposed to what is merely ‘supernatural’ is determined by which side of the Cross it comes from. Does it come to us from the non-crucified Sin-corrupted flesh side of the Cross, or does it come from the risen Lord Himself…who abides with the Father in Perfect Righteousness…on the Resurrection side of His Cross? If it comes to us from our risen Lord, through our own crucified flesh…by the invincible Power of the Holy Spirit…it comes from the Perfect, All-Sufficient Original Creation and the Eternal Perfection of the Lamb’s Blood Covenant Redemption. In that case it is ‘Spiritual’ and its supernatural Fruit can be trusted and shared and enjoyed in total safety, peace and joy. But for the fallen world, that is always impossible!

“The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it to life eternal. If anyone serves Me, he must follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also; if anyone serves Me, the Father will honor him.” (John 12:23-26)

“Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our Life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in Glory.” (Colossians 3:1-4)

This was the issue being contested in the pharaoh’s court. The eternal, living Word of God, whom we now know to be the risen Lord, ‘Messiah Yeshua,’ was being revealed through Moses. And the Serpent always does everything he can…to blur, distort and erase Him from the minds of the pharaoh and the Egyptians and the rest of the world.

 “But Aaron’s (God-endorsed) staff swallowed up their (counterfeit) staffs. Yet Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, and he did not listen to them, as the Lord had said (forewarned).” (Exodus 7:12b-13 Amplification and emphasis added.)

The Serpent tried to counteract the warning and summons of God’s living Word with a distracting, contradictory ‘magic show.’ That is always his tactic, regardless of the age or era in which the war between Light vs. Darkness continues to unfold. Today it is no different. Many leaders and governments and cultures perpetuate the attitudes and agendas the pharaoh and his successors throughout human history pursued in the past. Egypt had its pantheon of false gods and worldly agendas, and so does each succeeding generation and regime, even to the present day.

All things are wearisome; Man is not able to tell it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor is the ear filled with hearing. That which has been is that which will be, and that which has been done is that which will be done. So there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one might say, ‘See this, it is new?’ Already it has existed for ages which were before us. There is no remembrance of earlier things; and also of the later things which will occur; there will be for them no remembrance among those who will come later still.” (Ecclesiastes 1:8-11)

Now we can see that the revelation of the Cross does not originate in the New Testament. It is deeply embedded in the Torah…starting in Genesis! Sin is the state of decapitation, rebellion and separation from the Authority of God’s living Word! To be in a state of Sin is to be the opposite of the image and likeness of God’s Word. To be in the state of Sin is to be the image and likeness of the Serpent that is doing whatever he can think of to try to usurp the Authority and the Supreme Dominion of God’s living Word! That is what we call ‘self-life,’ the radically independent, living death activity of the first Adam. That is the level at which Cain, Nimrod and those that perished in the flood and the builders of the Tower at Babel chose to remain. God rejected whatever they tried to produce or offer while in that state, because it was ‘dead!’ It did not originate with Him, through His Word. So this is what God has in mind when He says: “Repent!” Repent means “Death to your state of ‘living death! Crucify it and Follow Me so that I can teach you My ways and how to walk in them blamelessly!”

God’s Word was sent in judgment, in the form of the flood. He came to destroy the Serpent’s rebellion and the decapitated people that insisted on living out and perpetuating his lies. All of that was crucified and done away with. But at the same time, God’s Word is sent to be The Ark of Salvation for those that would hear, obey and rest in His Perfection. This is the Gospel as revealed repeatedly in a variety of ways, in the Torah. God’s living Word comes to serve, exactly as God commands. And we must forsake our rebellion and crucify the demonic delusion of radical independence from our Creator, and forsake the toxic, self-adoring mentalities, identities and lifestyles that ooze out of it. God demands the total crucifixion of what the Serpent spawns in our minds and hearts, so that His living Word can take over, reunite us to Himself, and bring us back under His true Authority, and fill us with His own Spirit and Eternal Life and Perfect Rest.

The Cross is God’s way of terminating our separation from His beloved Son, the living Word. When we reconcile with Him and begin to follow Him, we die to drawing from an alien, alternate ‘life’. We die to our former living death and are set free of the Serpent’s coils…free to live only to God and from God in Yeshua’s Resurrection. That restores us to true, God-designed ‘humanity’ which is, by essence and activity, the image and likeness of God’s living and written Word. And that is…supernatural and SPIRITUAL!

So we see the continued revelation of the Cross…the death of Sin and Death…and the Resurrection available through the Life-giving Word of God, embedded within the events and dynamics of the books of Genesis. And then we see it in the summons God’s living Word gave to Israel, through Moses, “Follow Me out of Egypt!” “Follow Me into the Wilderness and I will baptize you into My death and make a way out for you when there is no way out…and I will bring you back up from death and transform you into My own image and likeness!”

If we obey His call and drop everything and are ready to obey when He says to us, “Follow Me,”that is the awesome, magnificent future destiny into which He will take us.

“And I saw the Holy City, New Jerusalem, coming down out of Heaven from God, made ready as a Bride adorned for her Husband. And I heard a loud voice from the Throne, saying, “Behold, the Tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them, and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any Death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:2-4)